


dreaming in the heart of the honeyed dark

by jujubiest



Series: SPN One-Shots [28]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mark of Cain (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29771796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: Amara never saw the twin monsters of hubris and ego hiding in her brother's eyes. She isn't sure she would have known what she was seeing, even if she had.
Series: SPN One-Shots [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/177362
Kudos: 4





	dreaming in the heart of the honeyed dark

Being is...unimaginable. Indescribable. There is a beginning, which she doesn't remember, and someday there may be an end. In the space between though, there is being. And being was beautiful, for a time.  
  
Many who have not known nothingness confuse it with Darkness, but she knows the two are not the same. She was born first, born from nothing, a shout in an otherwise quiet universe. She was alone, at first, unmoored, and it was terrible.  
  
Then Light was born.

She remembers him small and babbling, excitable and bright from the first. He was her opposite, and her perfect complement. There were no labels, no titles, there was no hierarchy, because there were no others. All the words invented since that time in an attempt to describe the wholeness of spirit the two of them represented together?

Pale imitations, never coming close. Attempts to recreate and name something that never had to be created or named; it simply was. They stood only in relation to each other, and they were complete. He told her stories, she sang him songs. And for a time, there was peace. Balance.  
  
She never saw the twin monsters of hubris and ego hiding in her brother's eyes. She isn't sure she would have known what she was seeing, even if she had. But they lived there, maybe from the first. They grew and grew, eon to eon, until at last they birthed something new again, the first new thing since Light.  
  
Creation, he called it.  
  
It's hard to describe the impulses that rose in her when she looked upon this thing her brother had made. Anger, perhaps. Envy, jealousy, or both. Sadness. She did not know, but they unsettled her peace. Threw off the balance. Moved her beyond the soothing quiet of dark, into the screaming upheaval of destruction.  
  
She looked at herself and trembled. Looked at her brother and felt afraid. Wondered if this thing had always been part of her, or if he had drawn it into being alongside the world he loved so much more than he loved her.  
  
He forgave her, for breaking his world. She forgave him, for breaking their peace. They went back to what they were, but between them a yet another new thing had already opened its eyes and its hungry, toothy mouth.  
  
Resentment.  
  
And her brother kept creating.  
  
At first it was only two. One for each of them, he said. One dark and quiet, somber and thoughtful and true. The other bright and loud, laughing and giddy and scheming. She loved her nephews, little points of light that they were. The balance shifted, tilted in one direction. But she let it go. She tilted with it. They were too sweet and lovely to begrudge, and they made her brother too happy to deny. Her brother taught their quiet child to tell stories. She taught their loud one to raise his voice in song.  
  
They were a family. And it was good. And she was so wrapped up in being happy, she did not notice when his smile started to grow strained again.  
  
He made two more. One more like her, one more like him. Both beings of light, and the balance tilted once more.  
  
She barely even felt it shift.  
  
She never saw the knife coming til it was buried in her back to the hilt. Even then, she shuddered, uncomprehending, as she felt her brother, her beloved brother, do the unthinkable.  
  
Betrayal felt like being in reverse. Betrayal tasted like silence spread thin over millions of years, the passage of time only felt now, now that she was so alone.  
  
Outside, her brother birthed creation. Inside, she curled into her cage, learning how to hate. Her anger dug itself in deep, sprouted healthy roots. It grabbed the soul that locked her in and twisted, and destruction became all that she knew how to be, for a time.  
  
Her last memory of her brother was not of his regret, or even sympathy. Her last memory of her brother was ugly, painful. His eyes were full of triumph as he locked her away.  
  
She cried. She screamed. She begged, and then...she slept. Her troubled mind reached out from her cage and infected Creation, turning everything it touched to ash.

When Lucifer, that bright and giddy child she had loved, finally fell, it was with her bitter song in his heart. When he tempted and tormented the first demon, the first knight, the first princes of hell, it was her vindication he felt freezing the warm light of his grace from within.

And when Cain slaughtered in Lucifer’s name, it was with her tears in the back of his throat. When he chose to lay his blade aside, it was her anger that screamed and rattled his bones like prison bars, begging him to pick it back up again.  
  
She knew nothing of this. She only slept in her cage, dreaming, red and dark dreams that finally faded into quiet.  
  
Until one day, some interminable amount of time later...something changed. The Mark found a new home, a new soul alight with fear and rage and pain for her to latch onto. A soul so bright it pierced through her cage and lit even her.

She recognized this soul. She knew the shape of its scars.

And so the Darkness stirred, and shifted, and woke at last.


End file.
